Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    


great conversation about news, media, the Internet, and attention:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/17/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-chris-hayes.html


"Democrats are Losing the War for Attention. Badly." Ezra Klein podcast,
with Chris Hayes.

"Chris Hayes is the host of MSNBC’s “All In,” and has written a forthcoming
book, “The Sirens' Call: How Attention Became the World's Most Endangered
Resource.” And he’s a brilliant thinker on how our modern attention economy
works and what it’s doing to our politics."
  

    
Regarding the discussion about headlines, we can't overstate their
importance. They are often the ONLY thing people read. And as was
noted earlier, social media short posts are the equivalent of
headlines without stories behind them.

That's why it's consequential when the Times (a notable offender)
posts Pitchbot-like headlines that are inaccurate and/or misleading,
as it so often does and so often changes afterward. 

Also: Musk is smart enough to have known what his gesture would mean
to actual Nazis. Think of it as an accurate headline into his
character.
  

    
Ezra Klein? None for me thanks!
  

    
Why?
  

    
Likewise Chris Hayes.
  

    
Ezra Klein's drumbeat against Biden after the June debate and his
constant bothsidesing and equivocating and fake intellectualism (all
of which preceeded the June debate and continues in the present) is
why I refuse to consume his crappy content.

Same more or less with Chris Hayes. I stopped watching him because
of his constant finger pointing at the Biden administration about
Gaza. I have no data but I'm willing to bet data would show people
staying home or voted third party specifically because of Hayes. He
also ratfucked Hillary in 2016. 

I came here to point out Rolling Stone winning the headline wars

"Convicted Felon Sworn In as President"

<https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/donald-trump-sworn-in-47th
-president-united-states-1235241770/>

It's behind a paywall. The Times' absolutely horrific headlines are
sometimes all people see because of the paywall. Paywalls are one of
the reasons headlines matter so much.
  

    
Klein was endlessly warning that Biden was too old and in a serious
decline before the debate. I was also really tired of it. Until the
debate proved that he was completely right.
  

    
I'd still rather have Biden with a cold than Bluto with a grudge. 
  

    
The debate proved no such thing McDee and a reminder that we're here
because of a permission structure that was created in 2016 to vote
for someone who is clearly a sociopath as every new yorker has known
since the 80s. In general terms, 2016 Trump voters should sit the
fuck down no matter how much they think they've evolved.

How is the legacy media going to cover the pardons of the 1/6
insurrectionists? Diner safaris? It's going to be absolutely
repulsive.
  

    
Larry, you expressed a similar sentiment earlier, and in response I
pointed out the mainstream coverage of Musk’s Naziesque salutes.

You seem to have settled on what “mainstream” news is going to do,
even when it didn’t do it before.

I think there’s an entire topic in the media conf devoted to
thrashing The New York Times ad hom.

 
  

    
Emily, whether it's the New York Times or something else, we're
going to be reading/watching/hearing these people interviewed about
"why did you do it?" and "do you have any regrets." That seems
relevant to a discussion of the news in 2025.
  

    
I can't be rational or polite about this so I'm going to skulk back
into conferences related to other interests. Nice seeing you all.

Emily, thanks for your gentle hosting touch.
  

    

<pspan> writes:

I think we may be assigning more importance to headlines than is
 warranted.

------

  I agree. I understand the idea that most people only see the headlines,
but that doesn't make them important. If they are skimming that
superficially, they aren't picking up much of anything. Meanwhile they are
being bombarded by heavily funded right-wing propaganda on Fox, from social
media, and just about everywhere here. Sharper wording of headlines is not
going to tip the balance back. I haven't gone nihilist about this, but I do
think we need to be doing more than lionizing pitchbot and digging a little
deeper for solutions.
  

    
Speaking (again) of headlines, here's one from NY Times today: 

"In Dueling Pardons, an Intensified Fight Over the Meaning of Jan.
6"

Self-satire -- and, if you care about responsible journalism from
the top news organization in the nation, beyond reprehensible.
  

    
I cannot really add more than what <axon> and <lperson> posted. I am
recovering from surgery and Klein already got more attention than
deserved from me thus I have no energy left for that bastard.
  

    


somehow Ezra Klein has emerged as a villain? interesting.

i feel as disoriented in this conversation as i used to feel when talking
with conservative Christian Republicans in my family. 

i guess i'm outta here. enjoy the blue bubble. i hope it works.
  

    
<Self-satire -- and, if you care about responsible journalism from
the top news organization in the nation, beyond reprehensible>

I don't see a problem with that headline. It seems to me to
accurately summarize the article's content. 

Count me among those who are tired of the media-bashing. I think, in
general, they've been doing an incredible job under terrible
conditions.

I understand that people often want scapegoats for difficult to
understand problems, but I don't think bashing one of the few
democratic institutions remaining is going to make the situation any
better. 
  

    
We have learned a few things about what's healthy for American
journalism and what doesn't seem to help much.

Purchase by bottom-feeding chains like Tribune under Sam Zell: a
disaster. 

Rich guy rescuers, ditto. The publisher of the multiple
Pulitzer-winning LA Times, Patrick Soon-Shiong, has shown himself an
unworthy steward, trying to bend news coverage to protect his pals
and his interests and overriding the editorial board to cancel a
Harris endorsement. He's overseen layoffs and now he wants a
bias-meter to monitor his reporters' reporting.
Bezos kept his mitts off the Post's news operation for most of his
tenure as owner and invested heavily. Then, of course, as soon as it
began losing money and Trump loomed, he remembered that what he
really cared about was his other profitable businesses and hired a
Murdoch clone to run the newsroom.  The exodus of editors and
reporters has accelerated.
(One exception: Newsday under a Dolan, one of those Dolans who own
Madison Square Garden, seems to be doing OK.)

So I come back to the central question, to which I confess I don't
have a good answer.  Apart from nonprofit newsrooms -- essential but
fragile -- what else can rebuild a robust network of local, regional
and national coverage? NPR has been fairly protected, thanks in part
to donations from Joan Kroc and others, but there aren't a lot of
other bright spots. 
  

    
I wish I had some genius idea.  My last day as a working journalist
was more than 50 years ago (and yeah, I was still just a kid) and it
pains me to see the state we're in.  At the heart of it all is
money.  If you're a Times subscriber (or a New Yorker subscriber)
you can look at a facsimile edition from a few decades ago and see
how many ads print publications used to carry.  We know who gets
that money now - they were on the dais at the inauguration.
  

    
Part of the problem is that for many decades, running a newspaper
was a license to print money. That is gone. And the noblesse oblige
that, for a time, had newspapers try to actually gather news
credibly is also gone. The profit motive, by itself, gave us shitty
newspapers (if by "shitty" we mean "slanted, sensationalist
newsgathering") and is doing so again.

What we do have, fragile as it is, is a relatively new respect for
the need to ensure credible news for communities (and for the
country). How to make that work, still a wip.
  

    
That's a very good point. It's important to remember that when print
journalism was thriving in a financial sense it was often pretty
mediocre (or worse).  Not wanting to upset the advertisers tended to
result in bland, toothless newspapers.  That certainly describes the
hometown newspapers of my youth.

So even if we could wave a magic wand and go back 40 or 50 years to
the old business model, we probably wouldn't want to.
  

    
I agree with Dan. That Times headline is a perfect example of
coverage with its head buried so far inside the beltway that it may
never come back.

There's no fight over what Jan. 6 meant. There's the truth and
there's the disinformation campaign to distort and suppress the
truth.

There's what actually happened on Jan. 6, and how some of the people
responsible for what happened were held to account via completely
above-board trials and convicted by citizen juries.

Then there's the made-up version that turns the insurrectionists
into freedom warriors (yet also peaceful protestors) and the trials
into persecution, and the convicted criminals into political
prisoners.
  

    

Also: While Tiffany and Larry may no longer be participating, I want
to say that I don't think this discussion is in a blue bubble here,
or under-reacting to the dangers we're now in as a nation. 

Would be more satisfying if we were doing more emoting?
  

    
I'm uncomfortable with the level of hyperbole I'm finding in social
media and elsewhere, including in some conversations on the WELL. Of
course we're upset, fearful, outraged, angry etc. - but we're in a
stronger position if we stick to the facts and manage our fear more
reasonably. 
  

    
Mark's right that we shouldn't romanticize the local journalism of
50 and 60 years ago. Local papers dependent on local advertisers
could tell readers what was happening at the zoning board --
valuable in itself -- but were leery of reporting whether that
reflected pressure from some of the same wealthy folks who were
buying ads. You might not read about poor working conditions in
retail establishments. The political endorsements, if there were
any, probably weren't entirely disinterested.

Perhaps the bigger loss is the regional papers that had more
independence, more staff, more ability to investigate, in places
like Cleveland and Indianapolis and Baltimore and Buffalo -- where,
recall, there were often two competing papers, morning and evening.

Aside from ProPublica and maybe local NPR outlets, there's nothing
replacing them journalistically.